Kitchen Knives & Tools

If you have ever tried preparing food without a knife, the only reason for that probably was the absence of one. That or a dare, because it is literally impossible to prepare a decent dinner without cutting things. Chopping is one of the most frequent operations when preparing food, and you are going to spend a lot of time holding your sharp or not-so-sharp knife. But to hold it and then sharpen it, you first need to acquire it. 

Everyone, who has ever seen a single cooking show, probably noticed a small army of knives hanging somewhere in the background. “There is not enough food to make use of them all,” you think, “I can do the same with a single knife.” You are probably right, one knife should suffice, but for some reason, it doesn’t. If more than one person is cooking, your preparation process might turn into a capture the flag session. The more, the better.

First things first, there is no longer a thing like ‘a simple knife’. Simple knives were attributes of our ancestors. Today we have an elaborate collection of blades created for certain foods and textures. How many types of kitchen knives are there? Here’s a brief introduction to the world of sharp objects.

Cooking Knives

These knives are used for preparing food and working with raw materials. As the texture of every ingredient is different, there are separate categories of knives for each food type as well as those that can be called basic.

Basic knives include chef knives, utility knives, and bread knives. The chef knife has a long, broad blade with a straight edge. It is the most versatile type of knife, perfect for chopping and mincing. The utility knife is a smaller and more compact version of the chef knife and is great at chopping smaller foods. The bread knife has a long blade with a sharp serrated edge, similar to a saw. A perfect choice for soft-textured foods like all types of bread and some cakes.

Then we have knives for meat cutting. There are renowned cleavers, carving, and boning knives. Cleavers have a flat, rectangular-shaped blade and are used to chop raw meat, either for butchering or dividing the piece into smaller portions. Boning knife’s blade is slim with a very sharp edge, tapering upwards to a pointed tip. The boning knife is a great choice for cutting meat bones and trimming cartilage. The carving knife has a very long and narrow blade, allowing for thin and evenly sized meat slices. 

Fish or meat? Knives do care. Filleting knives and salmon knives are designed for preparing seafood, filleting, and descaling. A filleting knife has a long, slim, and flexible blade, great for removing bones and carving fillets. Salmon knives have a long, double-edged blade for slicing and filleting larger fish.

Dinner Knives

Congratulations, you have managed to sail through the sea of kitchen knives and prepare your dinner. Now you need to eat it. Kitchen knives tend to be bigger and thus are not as comfortable to hold while eating as dinner knives. Dinner knives are those you’ll likely use during breakfast, lunch, or dinner. They often feature a serrated edge to help you carve through tougher foods.

A steak knife has a sharp tip and serrated edge. It allows you to easily cut through cooked meats. Steak knives are light and versatile and will make a great addition to your cutlery.

Butter knives have a soft, blunted paddle-shaped edge that allows you to spread butter or cream cheese without slicing the bread. If you like your bread with butter or marmalade, this one will make your life much easier.

Gritr Outdoors has a selection of cooking knives to complete your cutlery collection. Following the golden rule ‘the more, the better’, we also offer you steak knives sets and cooking knives sets to get many knives at once and forget about needing them forever.